'Few stink and simmer with pollutants like West Midlands rivers' – Mike Lockley on region's clean-up battle

In some areas, waterway scenes still resemble Constable paintings. Yet looks are deceptive and the clear water disguises chilling tales of the stinking, chemical riverbank.

And few stink and simmer with pollutants like West Midlands watercourses, choked by a chemical cocktail of ammonia, phosphorous, nitrates and microplastics, soured by unchecked sewage spills.

Messing about in the rivers means potentially wading through a stew of pollutants. Those who indulge in “wild swimming” – the increasing popular pastime of plunging into them – risk diving into a sinister soup of substances.

There are stretches where Roderick the Water Rat would retch, Hammy Hamster heave.

Our rivers are sick, experts warn – and the enormity of that sickness has not yet been grasped by the general public.

The Severn, Britain’s longest river that flows from its mid-Wales source through Shropshire, has experienced some of the nation’s highest levels of sewage discharge. In a two year period, there were a harrowing 33,667 sewage spillages spewing for a combined 265,881 hours, a report by the Angling Trust, published last year, states.

That is an average of 46 per day. And that constant flow, combined with agricultural chemicals that wash into water, has created mass blooms of choking algae.

Consider those statistics when gazing at the Severn as it flows through Ironbridge.

Smestow Brook may be a mere minnow compared to the mighty Severn, yet it is of vital drainage importance to Wolverhampton, the wider Black Country and South Staffordshire.

According to pressure group 'Top of the Poops', which has, it says, based findings on Environmental Agency data, Smestow Brook was polluted by sewage 175 times in 2023, the incidents lasting 509 hours.

Think upon the River Trent, that begins life clean and babbling on Staffordshire Moorland then meanders through Rugeley.

In February, Severn Trent Water was fined over £2m for “recklessly” allowing the equivalent of 10 Olympic swimming pools of sewage to enter the river from its Strongford Treatment Works in Stoke five years ago.

Our rivers are sick. In general, they are not as sick as they once were, states the Environment Agency, but there’s no denying the patient is poorly.

That is clear from figures revealed in The Rivers Trust’s State of Our Rivers report 2024. Of the 3,553 stretches given a health check, only 151 had shown signs of getting better since the last survey in 2019. In all, 151 had declined and 85 per cent were below accepted good ecological standards.

The menace remains masked because the general public’s perception of pollution levels is based on what can be seen floating on water. That debris can be quickly cleansed, yet the long-term enemies are hidden and unseen.